


Plants Need Light

by Subtlety Lost (fishstic)



Series: Hard Light Redemption [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Autistic Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani, Canon Autistic Character, F/F, Multi, Redemption, Satya is with the overwatch peeps for reasons, Trans Sombra (Overwatch), accidental adoptive mom!satya, aka just because I want her to be and she's not a villain, because what's the fun of Sombra without at least a little conspiracy, it's basically self-indulgence, it's mostly fluff, maybe I should stop tags, okay I know this fic will seem a little weird, probably, that's code for "making it up as I go", the botany/nanorobotics/nanobiotics is pretty much probably just bullshit, with some conspiracy theories thrown in
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-07-08
Packaged: 2018-11-08 15:51:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11084877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishstic/pseuds/Subtlety%20Lost
Summary: Routine missions can be ruined by the smallest things: the unexpected appearance of Talon, a malfunctioning turret, Fareeha getting distracted by pretty girls, a possible fairy in a bush that turns out to just be an orphaned child who was scared by the unexpected appearance of Talon.One of those things didn't happen, and one of them didn't surprise Satya at all. Unexpected appearances were Talon's specialty and her turrets do not malfunction. A child hiding in a bush by the point in King's Row? That did surprise Satya. And nothing was quite the same after that. Children are the future after all, even Satya knows that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for any grammar mistakes, I'm impatient and didn't want to wait for my beta to wake up because I have two commissions to work on as well. If you have criticism don't be too harsh, I'm literally just writing this because it makes me happy.

_ Everything in its place _ . Satya smiled slightly as she strategically hid another turret in the tall grass beside the point. Her job was easy enough. Her team usually attempted to make sure that nothing made it this far. Anything that did was easily taken care of by her turrets and photon projector. So far, nothing indicated this mission was anything more than routine. There was no sign of Talon, nor any wild animals, not even a random piece of litter. Nothing, just routine.

Small things can ruin routine though. She was placing a turret underneath a holly bush growing on one side of the point when she accidentally rattled one of the branches and a small voice said, “Don’t eat the berries; they’ll make you sick.”

The voice  _ sounded _ like it was coming from the holly bush itself, but that was impossible. She had heard a lot of  _ rumors _ about fairies from Tracer, but that’s all they were. Rumors. Right? It made more sense than not for them to just be rumors, but Angela had said something about fairies once before as well, and surely Angela wouldn’t lie to her.

“Are you a fairy?” she asked quietly, not wanting Angela, who was standing fairly close by, to hear her in case she was wrong and what Angela had said about fairies was that they didn’t exist.

“A fairy? Don’t think so,” the voice replied. “Unless being a bloody plant orphan makes you a fairy. Actually… that might make me a fairy.” A child stuck their head out from the bush. They had dirty red hair, an asymmetrical smattering of freckles across their nose and cheeks, and eyes that were green like the leaves of the bush they were hiding in. “Name’s Amaranth, but you can call me Ivy.” They held out a hand for a handshake then after a moment pulled it back, before Satya had decided whether or not to accept the gesture. The kid didn’t seem so much impatient as unsure of whether they’d given a proper greeting.

“I’m Satya; what are you doing here?” Satya asked. It seemed like the proper reaction. It wasn’t every day she found a child hiding in a holly bush.

“Hiding,” Ivy replied. “There’s some blue lady here and she kicked me out of my rooftop garden. She’s the only person who’s found me up there since my parents died. She was scary. I think she might be a zombie.”

“Blue lady?” Satya said.  _ Talon! _ She turned around and looked at Angela. “Mercy, we have a problem.”

“Scheisse,“ Angela cursed under her breath. “What is it?” She walked over and looked to see what was going on. “Is that a child?”

“Well I’m not a gremlin or a fairy, probably,” Ivy replied. “I could be a fairy. Are you an angel?”

Angela chuckled slightly. “It would appear that way, and my name is Angela. Symmetra, what’s the problem?”

“Talon,” Satya replied. “Ivy, tell her what you told me.”

“A blue lady, who might be a zombie, kicked me out of my rooftop garden,” Ivy said, “so I’m hiding in my holly bush.”

“Widowmaker,” Angela said.

Satya nodded, she had thought the same thing. This was bad. Amélie meant Talon. Talon meant chaos, and chaos was the last thing she wanted, especially with a child so close to where the fighting would be. She jumped when one of her turrets on the other side of the point exploded.

“Ivy, give me your hand,” she said glancing from the turret she’d placed under the bush to Ivy, still poking herself out of the bush. “You’re not safe in the bush.”

Ivy nodded and held out her hand. “Okay.”

Satya pulled Ivy out of the bush carefully and held her close as she stood up. It would be faster to carry Ivy than to let her run. Safer too. She looked around for a place to hide. There didn’t seem to be one. She frowned worriedly.

“Dog angel!” Ivy chirped pointing up excitedly.

Satya looked up as she heard the tell-tale sound of the Raptora’s jets. Fareeha landed carefully beside Angela.

“Take the kid to the drop zone, Symmetra,” Fareeha said, with a glance toward the nearby roofs. “We’ll hold the point.”

Satya nodded. She turned and started off back toward the drop zone.

“Bye-bye, Angels,” Ivy called over her shoulder. “Wait, what about my holly bush?”

Satya looked back for a second then said, “I’m sure it’ll be fine. Plants are resilient.”

“I don’t know what that word means, but okay,” Ivy said.

Satya nodded. She watched her steps carefully as she went. Partly to avoid falling, running in heels wasn’t as easy as she made it look, and mostly to avoid getting lost. The path back to the drop zone was fairly straight forward and she’d been in this place before but it was still so easy to get lost. “London is huge.”

“It’s the whole world to me,” Ivy replied, “I’ve never been anywhere else.”

“Do you ever get lost?” Satya asked.

“Everything I need is in my garden. One time I got lost, but it was okay,” Ivy replied.

Satya slowed to a walk when she was far enough from the point that she was sure there weren’t any Talon agents nearby. They weren’t too far away from the drop zone. “You said your parents are dead?” she said quietly, not quite a statement, but not quite a complete question either.

“Yep. I don’t remember them much,” Ivy said. “I don’t think anyone knew about me, no one ever came looking. We had no house. No roof.”

“How did you get your garden then?” Satya mused.

“I growed it!” Ivy said proudly. “I used itty bitty robots that can control the plants from inside the littlest bits of the plants.”

“Where’s a child with no family get nanobots?” Satya asked. That was really strange. Ivy couldn’t have built them herself, an orphan especially a homeless one wouldn’t have access to the kind of tech that would be needed. Not legally.

“Teeny tiny robots from the people in white. Actually… you kind of look like them,” Ivy said. Ivy poked at Satya’s prosthetic arm for a second then at her teal and white kameez. “But you’re a lot prettier than they were.”

_ People in white? _ “You stole the nanobots from Vishkar?” Odd. Vishkar did have a lot of interesting technology, but what were they doing with nanoprobes, in London? As far as Satya was aware, they didn’t  _ have _ any operations in London.

“I don’t know who they were,” Ivy said. “They had accents like yours. They weren’t as pretty as you. Scary, not pretty.”

“I see. Do you know what they were doing with the nanoprobes?” Satya asked.

“No,” Ivy said. “I took them because I thought I could sell them.”

“That’s illegal,” Satya said.

“Yeah, that’s why I didn’t do it,” Ivy replied. “I took this thing.” Ivy reached into her pocket and started to pull out something but stopped. “What’s that?”

Satya looked around but she couldn’t see anything. “What’s what?”

Ivy tilted her head then said, “Footsteps?”

Satya stopped walking and waited for a moment before setting Ivy down on the ground. “Can you point to where they’re coming from?” she whispered.

“Behind you,” Ivy said pointing in that general direction.

Satya nodded slowly and turned her head to see if she could see who was behind her, but there was nothing. Well, at first there was nothing. Then there was something, a sound. A chuckle. “Sombra, I know you’re there,” she said harshly. “This isn’t funny.”

“It’s a little bit funny,” Sombra replied as she stepped out of the shadows nearby. “I mean, what even is that kid? I didn’t take you for one to use a human shield. That’s more something I expect from Widow.”

“Ivy is just a child, leave her out of this,” Satya snapped.

Sombra blinked, taken aback slightly, and held up her hands apologetically showing that she didn’t have her weapons drawn. “Whoa, sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that I would hurt the child. Why do you think I’m just following you instead of actually attacking?”

“Because you think she’s pretty,” Ivy said, not seeming to understand that if Sombra  _ wanted _ she could, in fact, kill them both.

Sombra chuckled slightly. “You really think that?” she asked Ivy.

“I think she’s pretty, so everyone must think she’s pretty because she  _ is _ pretty,” Ivy replied. “That’s how prettiness works.”

“Sombra, why are you here?” Satya asked.

Sombra smiled slightly, “Can’t it just be because I think you’re pretty?” She chuckled then she paused for a second before adding more somberly, “I have information you might be interested in.”

“And you can’t just email it to me?” Satya asked.

“No, it’s better you  _ hear _ this in person,” Sombra replied, and pulled up a video on one of her screens.

The video was an internal Vishkar log of a trade agent’s report, warning other agents in the London area to keep a look out for a child matching Ivy’s description who stole some important nanotech as well as a tablet. It went on to say they’d been trying to trace the tablet but it appeared that the child, or someone assisting the child, disabled the gps and other locations data on the tablet.

“Ivy,” Satya said when the video was done, “do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in? How did you even do that?”

“Probably a lot,” Ivy replied. “I told you, I was going to sell them. If you sell or steal things you gotta make sure people can’t trace it. That’s what the Shady Man says, he did it for me.”

“I’d say more than a lot of trouble,” Sombra replied. “So that  _ is _ the child the reports talk about. I thought it might concern you, Satya, to learn that Vishkar is after a mere child just because the kid took something from them.”

“Ivy isn’t stupid,” Satya replied. “No one who steals from Vishkar is. They’d probably send her to their school.”

“Didn’t say she was,” Sombra replied. “However, you might need to be wary. Vishkar  _ can _ find you. You haven’t made that very difficult at all. If they do, and you’re with the child who stole the tech from them, well now that won’t look very good for either of you. There’s no guarantee that’s what they would do, and even if there was; do you really want her to go to that school? She can’t even speak the language.”

Satya shook her head at the thought of Ivy being sent off to a school in India, it was true she’d have an extremely difficult time there. It was also true that there wasn’t any guarantee that they’d see enough potential in Ivy to teach her.

“I didn’t think taking the things would be  _ that _ bad,” Ivy said. “They just left them sitting on a table. It was like they wanted them taken.”

Satya nodded. “Did you consider it could have been a trap?”

“I thought they didn’t even see me,” Ivy replied. “It didn't look like a trap. Not a trap for me. A trap for someone else, the person who came later and said they were lying because the things weren’t there anymore.”

That sounds more like a trade-off than a trap. This is really bad. “Sombra, I have to protect Ivy. Whoever Vishkar was going to give, or sell, the nanotech to is probably a lot less willing to forgive a child for taking the things in the first place; especially since she’s tampered with them since then. Can you find out who that other person was?” Satya asked.

“Of course, mi novia,” Sombra replied, taking a step forward and placing a single kiss on Satya’s cheek. “Now go, before your Overwatch friends get here and think I’m attacking you.”

“Not worried about your Talon companions?” Satya asked as she started to back away, holding down her hand for Ivy to take as she did so.

“I have my own agenda,” Sombra replied. “They know to leave me well enough alone.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's late my laptop went in for repairs early Monday (July 3) morning and I won't get it back until this Monday (the 10th) and I was (still am but I think it worked) having a hell of a time getting access to the chapter on my phone. Some formatting may have been lost I'll edit it back in when I get my laptop back. EDIT: Got my laptop back, formatting has been restored

“Your girlfriend isn’t on the same side as you?” Ivy asked as she looked out of a window in the building by the drop zone.

Satya was sitting on the floor nearby, tinkering with her light constructs, building and unbuilding little prisms of various shapes. It was relaxing. “Sombra is… on her own side,” she replied making a slightly larger heptahedral prism as she did so. “It’s complicated. She’s on my side, but she’s not on the side that I’m working for. That probably doesn’t make sense.”

“She likes you though,” Ivy said. “Is she good?”

“She’s… how do you say… Do you know anything about Hindu mythology? Or Greek?” Satya asked.

“No, but if you tell me about it, I can learn,” Ivy replied.

“In Hinduism, there’s a group of nature beings, the Asura. They’re the forces of chaos that war against the gods,” Satya said. “Sombra is a bit like if one of the Asura was a human from Mexico.”

“But you like her anyway,” Ivy pointed out. “That’s really good, cause she’s really pretty and she really cares about you.”

Satya nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure when she’d given any indication that she liked Sombra. Children were more observant than she remembered; or maybe she was just more obvious than she had first considered.

“Someone’s coming,” Ivy said. “It’s the angels! They have a monkey with them. Oh! I know her!”

“Who?” Satya asked standing up and walking over to the window.

Ivy pointed on the window at Lena, who was blinking around the group. The ‘monkey’ Ivy had referred to was Winston. As well as Angela and Fareeha, who Ivy kept calling angels. It made sense to Satya that Angela could be mistaken for an angel that was the whole point of her Valkyrie suit, but the Raptora (all her suits are called Raptora even the not bird ones, right?) looked kind of like a dog it didn’t make as much sense to her that Ivy called Fareeha an angel too. Unless Ivy just assumed any human who could fly or had wings was an angel.

“How do you know Tracer?” Satya asked.

“She’s from here, or somewhere near here, there’s an old poster with her on it on the door of the pigeon shed near my garden,” Ivy replied. “You called her Tracer, but I don’t think that’s her name.”

“Her name is Lena, Tracer is her callsign. Like ‘the angels’ you keep referring to are Mercy and Pharah, but their real names are Angela and Fareeha,” Satya replied.

“They called you Symmetra,” Ivy noted. “Is that your callsign?”

Satya nodded. It was the codename Vishkar had given her, and she felt like it suited her.

“And what’s the monkey’s callsign?” Ivy asked.

“He’s a gorilla, and his name and callsign are both Winston,” Satya replied. “Don’t call him a monkey to his face, or at all okay? He finds it very insulting.”

“Oh!” Ivy gasped. “Okay, I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Satya replied. “You didn’t know. Come with me.” She motioned toward the door. “I can introduce you.”

“Are you gonna take me with you?” Ivy asked. “Back to wherever you all came from?”

“That depends on what the others say,” Satya replied. “But it would be for the best if I did that.”

“What about my garden?” Ivy whined. “All the plants were perfect. I even had all the tomatoes growing to be the same size.” She pouted slightly.

Satya hummed in thought for a moment, then smiled slightly at Ivy and said, “We’ll make you a new garden. Bigger, with more plants.”

Ivy grinned. “Can it have flowers? I love flowers, but all my plants had to be eatable because I needed to eat them.”

“It can have all the flowers you want it to have,” Satya replied. “Would you like to meet them now?”

Ivy nodded. “I do.” She held out her hand for Satya to take.

Satya smiled slightly and took Ivy’s hand. She led Ivy out the door and to where the rest of the team was waiting.

“Oh!” Lena gasped and stopped blinking around the team. “Aw, look at the little duck.” She blinked over and knelt down in front of Ivy. “You’re cute.”

Ivy grinned in response. “You’re cute too, chuckie.”

Lena grinned. “She speaks my language!”

Satya tilted her head slightly. “But… Ivy isn’t a duck?” she said as Angela walked over to her.

“Don’t worry about it, Satya,” Angela said kindly. “It’s just a nickname.”

Satya nodded and then looked at the others as they gathered around her and Ivy. “Everyone, this is Ivy.”

“Ivy, well that’s a pretty name,” Lena said with a smile. “I’m Tracer.”

“You’re Lena, chuckie,” Ivy replied with a smile. “You’re some kinda superhero!”

Lena chuckled. “You told her my name?” she asked Satya, still smiling.

“I told her everyone’s name,” Satya replied.

“You’re Lena,” Ivy said pointing at Lena, and then she continued, pointing as she did, “And that’s Fareeha, and Angela, and Winston.” Then she turned around and pointed at Satya herself. “And this is mum.”

Angela chuckled beside her and Satya tilted her head slightly. She wasn’t a mom, was she? Well, it didn’t really matter. Ivy needed someone to take care of her, and since she needed to protect Ivy from whoever it was that Vishkar was selling the technology to, she might as well be that someone.

“I didn’t know you have children,” Lena said straightening up and smiling at Satya.

“I didn’t,” Satya replied. “But, Ivy doesn’t have parents, and she’s… in a bit of trouble with Vishkar, so I’m going to take care of her.”

Angela stopped chuckling. “Taking care of a child is a huge responsibility, Satya.”

“I know,” Satya replied. “I’m going to do it.”

“Mum said I could have a garden if I went with you,” Ivy supplied.

“Satya, what exactly are you planning on doing with a child at the Watchpoint?” Winston asked. “I won’t tell you not to bring her there, as it would be safer than leaving her here, but I must know.”

“I don’t actually know,” Satya admitted, rather reluctantly. “Ivy took nanoprobes from Vishkar, that she was able to reprogram to control the growth of plants. Vishkar was either selling or giving those nanoprobes to a third party when Ivy took them. I don’t know why they had them, or what they’re actually for, yet; but I can’t just leave Ivy here where she’s sure to get caught for that theft. The consequences would be too great, she’s just a child. She wants a garden, we can give her that, Ivy and I will do most of the work, and we won’t be in anyone’s way, will we Ivy?”

“I won’t,” Ivy said. “I can be invisible! But not really, I just hide good.”

“What would you grow in the garden, Ivy?” Fareeha asked.

“I have tomato seeds in my pocket,” Ivy replied. “And strawberries, and lettuce, and potatoes.”

“Potatoes have seeds?” Fareeha asked.

“No, well… they do but I don’t have any; I’ll grow potatoes, and lettuce, but I don’t have anything to grow them with right now. I’ll have to get some.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” Fareeha smiled at Satya. “I’m sure your mom will take good care of you and your garden.”

Satya nodded. In the past, she’d never considered that she might want children, She’d never considered that she might like having something other than her turrets to take care of. She wasn’t actually sure that she knew how to take care of a child, but she was sure she’d learn. It couldn’t be too hard.

“So,” Ivy said. “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to home,” Satya replied before anyone else could.

“But where _is_ that?” Ivy asked. “Is it in another country? Because I don’t think I can go to another country. I don’t gots a Visa.”

“It’s alright, poppet,” Lena said. “You’ll be fine without one.”

“Where _are_ we going?” Ivy whined.

“Gibraltar,” Angela finally said when no one else was going to tell Ivy where they were going.

“Oh… that’s… a place.” Ivy looked incredibly confused.

“You ain’t learned about it in school yet?” Lena asked.

“I never been to school,” Ivy replied.

“Ivy, how old are you?” Angela asked.

“I think I’m… uhh…” Ivy trailed off for a moment. She seemed to put a great deal of thought to the answer but instead of giving a number said, “Mum, my first mum, she never taught me to count days without a calendar and my calendar got all full of marked off days a long time ago. I don’ know. I’ve been here,” she pointed at the ground indicating she meant just a general ‘here’ probably meaning to say she’s been alive, “for a really big number of days though. I can’t count that high. Probably more than seven whole years. I don’t know how many days in a year. But I know a year is one calendar and I ran out of calendar.” She didn’t seem to notice that she repeated herself.

“It’s alright, Ivy,” Satya told her. “I’m sure we can figure it out when we get home.”

“Will you teach me stuff, mum?” Ivy asked turning around and staring up at Satya. “Please?”

“Of course,” Satya replied.

“My first mum taught me things,” Ivy said excitedly. “I can read books, and tie my shoes… kind of. I can tell you what time the next train arrives! Oh! I can make things do other things.”

“What?” That was an entirely confusing statement to Satya.

“I made the little robots do other things,” Ivy replied as if that answered the question. She reached in her pocket and pulled out the tablet she’d taken and a little vial of nanoprobes. “These things can make more of themselves. I made them do other things. They’re supposed to go inside a people, but I got them to go inside plants.”

“Ivy may I see them for a moment?” Angela asked curiously.

“Yeah,” Ivy said passing the little vial up to Angela. “I used this thing to make them do other things,” she continued, opening up the tablet and showing off where she had made changes to the code that controlled the nanoprobes.

“Ivy, I don’t think it’s a good idea to be showing that off in public,” Lena said.

“Especially since you _stole_ it,” Satya added.

“Vishkar stole first,” Angela said. “These nanoprobes are still imbedded with the logo of the hospital I made them for.” She didn’t _sound_ angry to Satya, but Satya had been here long enough that she knew how to know Angela was angry by looking at the way _Fareeha_ reacted. That is to say, when Angela was angry and as long as that anger wasn’t directed at her, Fareeha set her jaw and achieved a look of minor intimidation, like she was ready to fight whatever had made her girlfriend angry.

Ivy looked up and tilted her head. “Those ones are new, made from the originals, after I took some of the changes that had been made to them away. I found that little picture on them was part of the original design and programming that they’d made themselves from, and I put it back because I thought it looked nice. That’s also how I got them to make plant cells grow instead of kill people cells. If they were made for a hospital, it’s really strange that they’d been reprogrammed to kill essential human cells. They had a code in them that when activated made them _eat_ blood. Blood is kind of needed to live.”

“You know about cells?” Satya asked.

“And programming,” Winston noted.

“Like I said, I can read. The plant books, computer books, and biology books in the public library were the most interesting to me, so I read them a lot even though the library lady said they were too big for me,” Ivy said. “The library also had little classes to teach kids to use computers and the internet. I was there for them.”

“I think the two of you are missing the point,” Angela said. “Vishkar took these nanoprobes that were created for and intended to _heal_ people and repurposed them, either of their own volition or for a third party, to _kill_ people.”

“In a _probably_ painful way,” Ivy added. “I mean, having a bunch of little robots in your body eating up your blood is probably gonna hurt.”

Satya nodded. “Nothing I’ve learned about Vishkar since leaving them explains why they would do something like that. I’d need to look over the original code that you changed Ivy, if that’s still possible.”

“It is, I kept copies in case my edits made the little robots not work at all,” Ivy replied. “It’s just good thinking.”

Satya nodded. “That is incredibly smart.”

Ivy nodded and turned the tablet off before putting it back in her pocket and taking the vial of nanoprobes back from Angela. “I need those for my garden,” she said in explanation as she also put that back in her pocket.

“Can you tell me more about how you made them work?” Angela asked.

“Maybe later,” Ivy said. “I’m sleepy and today is almost over.”

Angela tilted her head slightly.

Satya glanced up at the sky and noticed that the sun was starting to set. Ivy then, must think that the day ends with the setting of the sun. It would explain why she has a hard time keeping up with the days without her calendar—since some days had longer periods of daylight than others. “You can take a nap on the way home,” Satya said. “It’ll take about two hours to get there anyway.”

“What’s an hour?” Ivy asked with a yawn. “And how are we going?”

“We’re gonna take an airship,” Lena replied. She pointed up at the sky where they could see the airship coming in.

Ivy yawned as she looked up where Lena was pointing. Then she gently tugged on Satya’s pants leg. “Can you hold me?” she asked quietly.

Satya nodded and picked up Ivy. Supporting her weight by putting her arms under Ivy’s legs like a chair and letting Ivy rest her head on her shoulder. She smiled slightly as she made sure that Ivy was comfortable.


End file.
